Channel 4 Playwrights’ Scheme winners announced

The six winners of the Channel 4 Playwrights’ Scheme for emerging British talent have been announced.

The yearly scheme, which awards six bursaries a year to new writers, has been supported by Channel 4 since 2013.

Two of the six awards are funded by the Peggy Ramsay Foundation, and each is worth £10,000. The recipients will embark on 12-month attachment to a designated theatre and will write at least one full-length play during the year.

The winners are:

• Ross Willis, for Wolfie, who will spend the placement at the Orange Tree Theatre • Lulu Raczka, for A Girl in School Uniform (Walks Into a Bar), who will spend the placement at the Young Vic • Dipo Baruwa-Etti, for The Sun, the Moon and the Stars, who will spend the placement at the Almeida theatre • Yasmin Joseph, for J’Ouvert, who will spend the placement at the Royal Court Theatre • Tuyen Do, for Summer Rolls, who will spend the placement at the Bristol Old Vic theatre • Ruby Thomas, for Either, who will spend the placement at Hampstead Theatre

As part of the scheme, each writer will have the opportunity to submit their play for the Sonia Friedman Productions award in the year following their bursary. The award is given to the writer of the best play, chosen from one of the previous year’s bursary recipients.

It was received this year by Sonali Bhattacharyya for her play, Chasing Hares.

The six winners were selected by the scheme’s panel, chaired by Richard Eyre.

This year’s panel also included Sonia Friedman Productions’ literary associate Jack Bradley, Film4’s senior commissioning executive Julia Oh and playwright Nicholas Wright.

Eyre said: “I was delighted that this year there were six such strikingly original plays and that their writers will have a chance to work with six different theatres.

“I’m very grateful to Channel 4 and the Peggy Ramsay Foundation for making this possible, and to the judging panel for their patient and conscientious work.

“In addition, thanks to the generosity of Sonia Friedman Productions, we were pleased to give Sonali Bhattacharyya an award for her play Chasing Hares.”